[quote name='RollingSkull']You can zot the red eyed cocksucker easily with the magic missile spell but still, if you were grinding for souls, not only is Shrine of Storms better but it's also more fun once you get the hang of the stupid rolling attacks the enemies do. Get to level 2 there and the ghost enemies at the start all die and drop souls when you kill the reaper. More souls if you want to drop the world tendency to black (God be with you if you do, though.). Kill the reaper. Evacuate out, repeat. Much less risk, too.[/QUOTE]
Yeah, soul arrow works well for the 1-1 RE knight, but I'm assuming low-level; meaning that Latria isn't a likely destination for replacement spices you'll need for a Royal build that early on and they're spendy as hell from vendors. Low-level also won't have access to the Shine of Storms soul-grinding levels, but that Reaper is a good source. 1-4 is also good (albeit slower) soul-grinding at mid-level. If online in body form, it's also one of the most commonly invaded levels in the game prior to killing the boss. This offers the bonus of big soul payoffs for a skilled player.
IMHO, the single-best soul-grinding level is the final Shrine archstone after killing the boss. Those mantas are easy prey.
If you've cleared a world boss, then you want to work over the later levels of the castle so you'll have more grass than Little Jacob. It's a particularly annoying set of levels but the castle is the only place that drops grass reliably.
Agreed.
Tower of Latria drops spice but nobody wants to go to Tower of Latria unless you absolutely loved Doom 3. Which means the swamp world is only good for people who hate the sense of sight and LOVE the color of murky brown.
Again, agreed. I was actually really happy I created a Hunter build after finding out that spice was only fairly readily found in the Tower; and then only by those annoying squid-heads.
And the better blacksmith shows up below the big rotating elevator at the start of the first mines level. He can give you more weapon/armor upgrades, unique ones, and the stat-tailored upgrades, but damned if that all isn't min/maxing, wiki reading, ore-drop grindan bullcrap. You'll most likely ditch that stuff for an artifact weapon anyway.
Well, a player will never find a bow better than one that can be created with that blacksmith after Flamelurker (Lava Bow) or mid-game (Sticky Compound Bow). Both those can be created fairly early on and both are absolutely worth the effort unless a player is focused on the magic path.
If I have one complaint about the game, it is the rate of the better ore drops; particularly those that can be found only from certain geckos that are very hard to get to without re-loading tricks. Double ditto for Pure Bladestone. Trying to get that to drop is just flat out annoying.
Finally, connecting online resets your World Tendency to the global average. This will ruin attempts to go for WT, which is one of the main ways to get the fancier rare drops, so if you're going for WT runs, don't connect online.
I'd have to respectfully disagree. To clarify your post, the game doesn't forget your World Tendency when resuming your game, unless you're connecting for the first time and/or if connecting immediately after one of ATLUS' periodic WT online events. However, I would recommend NOT quitting the game in the Nexus while attempting to go for WT events.
I had no problem getting all white and black World Tendency events to trigger while playing exclusively online. I would suggest playing in soul form if purely focused on getting white tendency unless a player is really good at killing invading black phantoms and at a soul level that tends to see a good deal of invasions. Black WT can be manipulated easily by hoarding Ephemeral Eye Stones and then getting yourself killed in body form.
